Ever since publishing my book on law department benchmarks, and despite consulting mostly to law departments of large companies, I am still mystified why total legal spending declines (as a percentage of revenue) as company revenue rises.

A research paper, however, perplexed me further.It cited a 1990 survey of 376 firms that found that “small firms believed their patents were infringed more frequently [than the patents of larger firms], but were considerably less likely to litigate these infringements.” [Koen, 1992, cited by Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School in 1995 at www.people.hbs.edu/jlerner/Patintro.html.If larger firms are more trigger-happy on patent litigation, wouldn’t their total legal spending shoot up?